Missing What You Never Had
Extrañar lo que nunca tuviste
A student describes an experience of oneness during meditation, followed by the question "Is that all?" and a lingering guilt about feeling dissatisfied. The teacher explores dissatisfaction as a door into the illusion of separation, the difference between relative and absolute reality, and the impossibility of ever not being present.
Missing What You Never Had
A student describes an experience of oneness during meditation, followed by the question "Is that all?" and a lingering guilt about feeling dissatisfied. The teacher explores dissatisfaction as a door into the illusion of separation, the difference between relative and absolute reality, and the impossibility of ever not being present.
How do you cope with the feeling of missing something you never had, something you never lived?
Missing in the sense of extrañar?
Yes. Extrañar lo que nunca tuviste: to miss what you never had. I've felt hints of it before, but during the meditation the sensation came very strongly. You know when you think, "Oh, I miss this," and then wonder how you can miss something you never had?
Could you say what it is?
I don't know how to name it. I got there just once, during one meditation. It was the sensation of being one with everything, connected with everything. I just wanted to stay there. Then I came back. And when I came back, I remember asking myself, "Is that all? Is that it?" I felt bad about asking that question and feeling that way, because it was the most beautiful experience I have ever had.
Oh, that's beautiful.
It is. But I don't know how to name it.
It doesn't need a name. I know now what you're referring to. My sense is that when you come back and ask that question, there's a form of guilt, a shame.
Yes, I feel guilty. I felt everything, I was given everything, and still it wasn't enough. And I felt bad about that.
The part that can never be satisfied
That part of us, the part that ultimately isn't real, or isn't really what we are, can never be satisfied. That is its nature. In the universe of infinite possibilities, where everything in creation is possible, there is beauty in everything that's created, right? But what if one aspect of creation is dissatisfaction itself, pure and ultimate dissatisfaction? You could say it is a part of us, but it's not what we are.
So is it something like alpha and omega?
Yes. It's in there. It's one of the letters of the alphabet: ultimate dissatisfaction. But what I am is neither, and all.
So I guess I just show up and feel.
Love as the antidote to guilt
Yes. Clarity can come from the recognition of lovingness toward that dissatisfaction. It isn't directional, which is hard to describe in language; it's a lovingness with, or in, that dissatisfaction. It's the antidote to the guilt. But the guilt doesn't need to go away, and neither does the dissatisfaction. Otherwise the guilt becomes the problem, the shameful thing itself.
It's that whole complex. Metaphorically, though not only metaphorically, it goes like this: I am that which the Creator created in all of its might, and I'm looking back and saying, "You didn't do a good job. Something's wrong. Something's missing. You failed." And then I feel bad because I'm dissatisfied with ultimate creation.
Who am I to judge? But then I find myself there, and I answer myself: because you are the creator. That makes sense.
It does. But more freedom is still possible. There are different doors, and the one you're approaching is your nature; it's what's calling you. It's the dance and relationship between creator and creation, the unity with the divine. Within that relationship there is one perspective which is real, but less total: the perspective where there is a creator and a creation, and you are that creation. You can alternate in that recognition, creator and creation, but still there are two.
And still, it's an illusion.
Still there are two, and it is an illusion. For that reason the guilt, the shame, the sense of dissatisfaction, is a door, because ultimately it points to a belief that is false. Or it surfaces that belief.
The root of the illusion
One thing before you continue: that belief is grounded in the root of the illusion. In Christian terms it has been named sin, original sin. But it has been turned into something that just propagates guilt. To me, what it originally refers to is a very subtle, deep position of arrogance. The root of the illusion is the position: "I know. I, creation, know better." I use the word "knowing" in different ways. Here I mean belief, knowing in the sense of "this is not how it should be." The dissatisfaction is created by that belief, so the two are inseparable.
When that knowing is fully seen to be illusory, false knowing and not truth, then dissatisfaction is no longer possible. Dissatisfaction may appear, like a letter of the Greek alphabet, and it's simply, "Oh, there it goes. It came and it went." It isn't real. It isn't felt as "I am dissatisfied." That will no longer be possible.
So this is the real question: how do I set myself free? Sometimes I find myself saying, "Give me a break!"
That's the million dollar question. Those are the questions that matter. They're big questions.
How do I set myself free from there, from trying to get there?
Two ways of hearing
Everything I'm saying depends on what is hearing. There are two ways to hear. In the first, I hear the message, I understand it to some degree or interpret it into some understanding, and then I use that and work with it to get somewhere. That is more of the illusion. You cannot get anywhere.
Chasing the tail.
Yes, because what I'm describing is already here. It's already true and real. The other way of hearing asks how what I'm saying clarifies what is already here, what this is, and doesn't look for it as a strategy in time.
As the next step.
As soon as it's the next step in time, you are inhabiting one of the letters of the alphabet in time. It becomes: "Okay, now I'm Alpha and I need to get to Omega. I understand the message, and I'm going to work to get to Omega."
Yes, that's me.
Even the question of how to deal with the extrañar, with missing what I don't have, is a subtle strategy. At some level, all these practices and strategies are useful. Practices in time, learning how to be with difficult sensations: these bring about changes in the body-mind that are necessary, and those happen in time. But when we talk about ultimate freedom, the million dollar question, it's not in time. So I go back and forth, because the two aren't totally separate. Otherwise things would fall out of balance. There needs to be a balance, because time is real in the sense that everything is real. It's an illusion when it's interpreted to be fundamentally real, absolutely real rather than relatively real.
Time and space as appearance
Science knows this very well now: time and space are not two. Science has known it for a hundred years, and the wisdom of the sages has known it for millennia. Time and space are an appearance that is not two. They appear together. Time cannot appear without space, and space cannot appear without time. But they are appearances; they aren't absolutely fundamental. They aren't what reality essentially is. No serious scientist today would disagree. So I'm not speaking esoteric wisdom here. This is conventional physics.
Okay, let's see. You're talking more about the consciousness that makes all this possible?
Without getting into the metaphysics and philosophy of it, it literally is experience. I'm talking about something experiential, right here, right now. In the deepest, truest aspect of this experience, time and space are appearing. They can come and they can go. So they're not fundamental.
They're not real.
What "real" means
Not real in the Sanskrit sense of the word, which has a very different connotation than in the West. That's why there's so much confusion when teachings from Eastern writings or teachers are translated. In Sanskrit, the real is what does not change. So this object is not real, because I can break it. I burn it and it's gone. It was never real in that sense.
Wow. Okay.
When I speak in a Western framing, I say everything is real, because that fits the Western connotation of what is real. And when I talk about illusion, I mean that the reality of something is not what it seems.
The mirage
Think of an oasis in the desert. There's the appearance of water, but when it's not a true oasis, there's no water. Because of the heat, the sand reflects the sky. It's an optical illusion, a mirage. The appearance is real: there is what seems to be water on the sand. It's a real experience. But its nature, in the limited sense we're referring to, is a reflection of the sky. It isn't water; it only appears to be. So the water is not real, but the appearance is real.
In the same sense, when we talk about the illusion of what I am, it appears that what I am is this body and this mind. The body and the mind are real, like the appearance of water on the sand. But what I truly am, in this metaphor, is the sky. The reflection of a located sky on the sand is not what is truly being seen.
Let's say, metaphorically, we lie down under an open blue sky and all I see is sky. There's no way to identify with any part of it. But if I now create the illusion of it coming through body and mind, through perception and sensation, then it's located, like the sky on the sand. And then I am that, meaning I am this particular person. In that illusion a whole lot of things happen, which is what we've been talking about.
I've been working on being present.
You cannot not be present
That's beautiful. As that work progresses, there is recognition. I call it recognition, or realization, when something is seen that is already here, that is real. You can work on getting to the water when it's a mirage, and in a way it works, because at some point you realize you're not getting any closer, and you realize the water isn't really there. In that sense, working on being present is a useful, valid practice. And then you realize you cannot not be present. There only ever is presence, this.
You cannot be anywhere else. Where are you going? When you're not present, where did you go?
It comes back to the same thing. Oh my God.
When you're not present, you're in the illusion that you're not present. You're in the illusion that you've gone somewhere, but you're still right here.
Oh, thank you. It's better when you share it.
You're welcome.